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Well, it's that time again...

Just got my Republican Party primary ballot in the mail. It's now that time when we vet all the aspiring sausage makers and decide which ones we're going to send to the big sauasage factories in Phoenix and D.C. I recently sent out the following emails to candidates on the ballot and, since they touch on the subject of gun rights, I thought I'd post them here in case anyone else wants to cut and paste them and send them to the candidates in their districts. This email I sent to candidates for the state legislature:

Dear so-and-so

I am a Republican voter here in district such-and-such and would like to get your thoughts regarding an issue that is of substantial importance to me.

As you may be aware, within the last two decades, the legislature of our state has promulgated a mind-numbing plethora of frivolous, mala prohibita felony statutes with such draconian penalties that virtually every one of us is risking his freedom for a violation of something or other every day of our lives. At the same time, penalties for violating many pre-existing statutes have crept up, and the legislature has also done away with most of the mens rea that used to be required to obtain a conviction. Because of this, prosecutors in Arizona now enjoy the type of absolute power that could corrupt an angel and, consequentially, the right to due process of law no longer exists in any meaningful sense in our state--Candy Andy Thomas's gross misbehavior while serving his term in office, I think, has conclusively demonstrated this.

As a consequence of all of the foregoing, Arizona now has one of the highest incarceration rates in the nation. In 1980, we incarcerated just 1 out of 749 of our citizens. Today, that rate has soared to 1 in 170. As you are probably aware, incarcerating all of these felons that the legislature has been creating isn't cheap. Many conservative voters, myself included, are beginning to see this as nothing but another big-government swindle of the taxpayers to benefit powerful special interest groups like the prison industry lobby.

Before I go any further, as an aside, I would like to say that these developments are especially worrisome to me as a gun owner, since convicted felons lose their right to keep and bear arms--often permanently. I view this wholesale felonization of large segments of our citizenry as, among other things, a massive stealth gun grab. The right to keep and bear arms is, after all, totally meaningless if we're all convicted felons who are ineligible to exercise that right.

Should you be elected, I'd like to know exactly what you intend to do to stand up to APAAC and the prison industry lobby, reform our criminal code and restore fairness and due process of law to our criminal justice system.

In closing, I hope you will respond to this email as soon as your schedule will permit, as I eagerly await reading your thoughts on this matter. Thanks in advance for your response.

I am a Republican voter here in district such-and-such and would like to ask you a few questions:

1. Barack Obama's presidency has been a disaster from the very start, more damaging -- especially to the Constitution and the rule of law -- than any series of events since the war between the states. It will take decades to repair this damage, and only then provided that there's no more done. What will you do to begin the repairs?

2. The only disaster greater than the election of Barack Obama is the War on Drugs, which, failing in its publicly stated purpose, has turned into a full scale war against the Bill of Rights. It has corrupted government at every level, made billionaires of petty foreign criminals, turned our inner cities into freefire zones, and inflicted brutality and death on countless innocent victims. It has provided a myriad of excuses for treating a once free people like cattle. Worst of all, it has spread drugs more widely than the traditional purveyors of drugs ever could. What will you do to end this war against the American people and their rights?

3. Americans have been dismayed to observe, especially since 1994, that the elected representatives of your Republican Party are, almost without exception, a collection of cowards, idiots, and four-flushers, more than willing to sell out Americans and their rights to stay in office. What will you do to remedy the pusillanimity, stupidity, and dishonesty of the GOP?

4. Sometime over the last dozen years, the government declared war on America. It now routinely steals people's cash if it thinks they're carrying "too much", takes their cars if they're suspected of breaking some illegal local statute, smashes into their homes, destroys their belongings, crushes their pets underfoot, kidnaps their children, beats people up, and kills them. Ordinary, law-abiding individuals, seeing less and less difference between the police and the Hessians who once ravaged our nation during the Revolutionary War, worry they'll be treated the same way if they mark the wrong box on some form, make too large a withdrawal at their banks, exercise their rights too conspicuously, or speak out against these violations of everything America is supposed to stand for. What will you do to restore America's peace of mind, disarm the federal bureaucracy, demilitarize the police, and bring government back into compliance with decent standards of conduct and the Constitution?

5. Another thing deeply troubling thoughtful Americans is the use of the military to enforce domestic -- usually unconstitutional -- laws. So far, training exercises have terrorized thousands and damaged property. What will you do to end these dangerous practices, and have American troops thoroughly indoctrinated in the Bill of Rights so they can't be misused like this ever again?

6. The judiciary at all levels is swollen and putrid with judges ignorant of the law -- and belligerent toward it -- who believe their authority exceeds that of common law and the Constitution. They systematically prevent defendants from referring to the Bill of Rights and viciously suppress the 1000-year-old duty of a jury to examine the law as well as the facts of a case. What will you do to rid us of such judges and restore the rule of law to courtrooms across America?

7. For decades, the productive class has born a burden of taxes four or five times greater than that of a medieval serf, while local, state, and federal governments are now hundreds of times the size they ought to be. If there's any place in the world or any time in history where people should keep the fruits of their labor it's 21st century America. Yet it's clear that Americans aren't interested in "tax reforms" being offered and regard the difference between a "flat" tax and a national sales tax to be as trivial as the difference between being shot and hanged. What will you do to reduce taxes and the size of government significantly, and how do you define "significantly"?

8. Prohibitionists, environmentalists, health Nazis, feminists, and other fascist groups have been allowed to drastically alter the architecture of the republic. What will you do to abolish this habit of letting the loudest, most sniveling whiner rule the day?

9. In the past 65 years, each time a horrible crime has shocked the public, politicians, rather than examining the real cause -- usually something they did themselves -- have used gun owners as scapegoats, making it harder to exercise Second Amendment rights (in a manner reminiscent of Jim Crow laws), while pressure groups and media personalities, (like Klansmen at a lynching), bray support. What will you do to remove this illegal burden from the backs of America's 70 million gun owners who are fed up with being used as a punching bag?

10. The only value to sovereignty is the protection it offers to the lives, rights, and property of a nation's people. Since World War Two, America's sovereignty has been steadily eroded by participation in various international organizations. Today, Japan and other members of the United Nations openly plan to abolish the Bill of Rights and replace it with a document that is nothing less than a charter for worldwide serfdom. What steps will you take to restore American sovereignty, remove the US from these organizations, and these organizations and their vile, thuggish minions from American soil?

I hope you will respond to this email as soon as your schedule will permit, as I eagerly await reading your thoughts on this matter. Thanks in advance for your response.

Now, these emails will only work if one is a Republican voter, but you could probably make them work with a little editing if you're a Democrat or independent. Hope this can be of some help to some of the other activists who frequent this place.